Are Animation and Art Schools Worth the Money?
I wrote previously about my daughter who was the valedictorian of her high school, yet she decided that she wasn't interested in attending a traditional liberal arts college or university. To my horror, she wanted to pursue animation and art. As most Chinese elders will say, you will starve if you study art. The truth is, while parents can tout the career advantages of a math and science type higher education all they want, they cannot cannot shove that down their kids' throats either, especially when these days, society and colleges declare a kid 18 years of age as pretty much independent and that parents should take a hands off approach and allow their kids to make their own decisions in life. Let them sink or swim on your dime, except the cost is way more than a dime. It is over $40,000 just for tuition. Our local public universities such as the Universities of California and Cal State Universities don't offer a degree in animation.
Tuition at Calarts is not cheap, but my daughter has about a quarter of it in scholarships. Rather than opt for the pricey room and board at the college, she shares an off campus apartment with three other students .She cooks every meal for herself to save on dining out or eat in the school cafeteria. She gives herself $25 a week to buy groceries. On top of this, she takes on odd graphic design jobs from small business owners and from musicians by designing their logos, websites and album covers. While this barely covers the cost of her education, it makes her feel better to not take too much of our money for granted.
This first year of college, my daughter experienced what most students will naturally encounter: In college, there is so much competition and there are other artists who are just a good as she is, if not better. She is no longer the best in her school. She suffered from "imposter's syndrome" believing that Calarts must have admitted her by mistake, and she started to doubt herself and her abilities. As her parents, we couldn't do anything other than watch and suffer for her, encourage her to relax, have fun and not take her first year disappointments too hard. We worry about whether we all made a mistake in letting her attend Calarts instead of a traditional college that would give her more room to explore different disciplines.
At the end of the first year, she had to create a minute-and-a-half animated short in black and white, which is the requirement of the Calarts Character Animation program. The project took her all months. She had to put all her learning to use: Character design, character animation, digital methods, Photoshop, TV Paint, Adobe Premiere, perspective drawing, shot timing, etc. She added sound effects, music and other special effects, but was still not satisfied with the results. She felt that everyone else's project was better and more complicated than hers, and all her peers more talented. However, after the much ballyhooed Calarts annual Student Showcase was over, she found that her work was one of three first year films selected for the Producers Show, which will take place at the Director's Guild of America, supposedly a big deal. This gave her such a huge and much needed confidence boost. (Linked above is her first college movie selected for the Producers' Show).
As for whether an animation career is worthwhile, I suppose it depends on what students make of it. While Calarts is considered to be one of the top animation schools in the world, excelling in character animation and story telling, I can also see that it's relative lack of 3D animation instruction may set it behind other schools that teach more of the latest animation technology. While American animation had led the world with some of the best animated movies and TV shows, I also see other countries and their talents catching up fast in artistry, entertainment quality and technique. The high paying jobs in today's animation field may go away to foreign countries.
But, my daughter says she is not that interested in entering the traditional entertainment industry career in animation. I guess we will have to see what she plots out for herself in the coming years. What I can tell is that despite the world needing to hire more scientists, doctors, computer programmers and engineers, art and design is not dead. If fact, with technology leading the way instruct knowledge, its forays into virtual and augmented reality, game animation and graphics, I think there will still be jobs out there after the pricey four years of art education.
I sure hope so.
Candy Crushed from Chloe Hsu on Vimeo. Give it a play, or follow her on Vimeo to see where an art student takes herself career wise.
With much apprehension, we let our daughter attend her dream art college: The California Institute for the Arts in Valencia, to pursue Character Animation, a major so prestigious, apparently only around 45 students get in each year despite thousands of applicants. Calarts was founded by Walt Disney, and while it has majors in music, art, dance, and film, its flagship program is animation. It likes to tout the fact that famous animation directors such as Jorge Guttierez, Tim Burton, John Lassetter, Glenn Keane, Brad Bird and Brenda Chapman all attended the college, along with countless other artists and visionaries in the animation business.Tuition at Calarts is not cheap, but my daughter has about a quarter of it in scholarships. Rather than opt for the pricey room and board at the college, she shares an off campus apartment with three other students .She cooks every meal for herself to save on dining out or eat in the school cafeteria. She gives herself $25 a week to buy groceries. On top of this, she takes on odd graphic design jobs from small business owners and from musicians by designing their logos, websites and album covers. While this barely covers the cost of her education, it makes her feel better to not take too much of our money for granted.
This first year of college, my daughter experienced what most students will naturally encounter: In college, there is so much competition and there are other artists who are just a good as she is, if not better. She is no longer the best in her school. She suffered from "imposter's syndrome" believing that Calarts must have admitted her by mistake, and she started to doubt herself and her abilities. As her parents, we couldn't do anything other than watch and suffer for her, encourage her to relax, have fun and not take her first year disappointments too hard. We worry about whether we all made a mistake in letting her attend Calarts instead of a traditional college that would give her more room to explore different disciplines.
At the end of the first year, she had to create a minute-and-a-half animated short in black and white, which is the requirement of the Calarts Character Animation program. The project took her all months. She had to put all her learning to use: Character design, character animation, digital methods, Photoshop, TV Paint, Adobe Premiere, perspective drawing, shot timing, etc. She added sound effects, music and other special effects, but was still not satisfied with the results. She felt that everyone else's project was better and more complicated than hers, and all her peers more talented. However, after the much ballyhooed Calarts annual Student Showcase was over, she found that her work was one of three first year films selected for the Producers Show, which will take place at the Director's Guild of America, supposedly a big deal. This gave her such a huge and much needed confidence boost. (Linked above is her first college movie selected for the Producers' Show).
As for whether an animation career is worthwhile, I suppose it depends on what students make of it. While Calarts is considered to be one of the top animation schools in the world, excelling in character animation and story telling, I can also see that it's relative lack of 3D animation instruction may set it behind other schools that teach more of the latest animation technology. While American animation had led the world with some of the best animated movies and TV shows, I also see other countries and their talents catching up fast in artistry, entertainment quality and technique. The high paying jobs in today's animation field may go away to foreign countries.
But, my daughter says she is not that interested in entering the traditional entertainment industry career in animation. I guess we will have to see what she plots out for herself in the coming years. What I can tell is that despite the world needing to hire more scientists, doctors, computer programmers and engineers, art and design is not dead. If fact, with technology leading the way instruct knowledge, its forays into virtual and augmented reality, game animation and graphics, I think there will still be jobs out there after the pricey four years of art education.
I sure hope so.
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